Evil Dead Regeneration

There is a phrase that you can’t keep a good man down … apparently that extends to the dead as well. At least that is what Ash is discovering in Evil Dead Regeneration, the next edition in the Evil Dead saga starring everyone’s favorite chainsaw-wielding semi-maniac.

GameZone.com received preview code of the title and jumped into the role of Ash with reckless abandon. To understand the game, there are a couple of things that must be realized: first, Ash will traverse zones that are chock full o’ dead, and they all want a piece of him; second, the game is full of quips and does not take itself seriously.

For those who know little about the Evil Dead series, a little background may be in order. If you saw the film, Army of Darkness – the 1993 Bruce Campbell movie – then you are familiar with Ash. A hardware store manager, who fell into the world of the dead courtesy of an evil book (the Necronomicon, written in blood and bound in human skin with the power to reanimate the dead and unleash demons upon the world). The evil infected his hand so he cut it off and replaced the missing limb with a chainsaw. He wields a shotgun (which, in the game, never runs out of shells or needs to be reloaded) with the other hand, and usually throws in a quip whenever he returns an animated undead to the status of unanimated.

Ride 'em, sidekick

In Regeneration, Ash has been arrested, convicted of murder and sentenced to an institution for the criminally insane. Well, the horror of that cabin in the woods is nothing compared to what is going on at Sunny Meadows. Dr. Vingo is using the Necronomicon and trying to harness its power for his own through his perverted experiments. All he has managed to do is unleash new terrors on the world.

Fortunately, for the world, Ash is on the scene.

In many ways, this is very much an arcade experience. Ash battles wave after wave of undead, or freshly dead, hacking them into pieces with the chainsaw or blowing them apart with the shotgun, regaining health through life force traces the re-dead leave behind, as he moves through the levels. He can gain some new powers courtesy of markers within certain levels, but those powers are only in effect if he stands on the marker and uses it.

Like what, you ask?

Well, it should be explained that this time around Ash has a sidekick, whom you can really kick. A three-foot tall deadite named Sam, who has attitude but fights alongside Ash, or for Ash, and each time he dies he just reanimates. Sam, though, is not without some phobias. When Ash asks him to go into a cave, he balks because there are rats in there that carry diseases, like gingivitis.

So, Ash steps on the Necronomicon marker and possesses Sam.

Ok, this is a beta, but there was a problem in that part of the game. Sam crawls into the cave, which has the other end guarded by a rather large and deadly demon, and instead of trying to sneak past him, Sam crawls through another tiny opening and emerges on the rocks above the demon. At this point, a prompt appeared with five O indicators – which in using the controller did absolutely nothing. That is an attack key, and using it made Sam dance about, swinging wildly at nothing. The key that needed to appear was the triangle key, which makes Sam jump down onto the neck of the monster and ride him to the gate, destroying everything in its path, including said gate.

That done, the beast plucks Sam off its head, dismembers him and tosses the pieces away. Sam regenerates near Ash, and the two must find a way to defeat the demon, while working through the steadily spawning skeletons coming to aid it.

Now, as to being able to kick Sam. You simply target and use the up trigger on the D-pad to kick him. You will need line of sight, or Sam will bounce off obstacles and not get to where you need him to be. You can practice at the start of the game by kicking Sam into a woodchipper, or a moving fan, or even try to shoot some hoops using him as the ball. It is an inane but pleasant diversion.

As far as the AI of Sam is concerned, it needs work. Shortly after defeating that monster, you have to get by a soul-eater, a huge one-eyed worm like guardian of a gate. To do so, you need to feed it. You find the pods, release the soul, which Sam ingests, then you go back and kick Sam into the soul-eater’s cavernous maw. However, rather than take the most direct route back, Sam wanders off and is attacked. If he dies, you fail. His circuitous route is just an excuse to throw more mobs into the mix and have Ash slay more undead.

Another problem the game has, at this stage of development, is the lack of save points. After playing for about an hour, Ash was finally killed. With no ability to save, and no auto-save points, the only options were quit or new game. Hopefully that will be fixed by the time the game releases.

The game does feature other weapons besides the chainsaw and shotgun, and the load times are minimal. The camera does not always allow players to roam around for a look at the environment, and can actually hinder looking at what is attacking at times. However, counter that with a smooth control system and solid graphical elements.

The game has some tweaking to do before its release in mid-September, but for those who enjoy arcade-style non-stop action with a sense of humor, and for Ash fans in general, this is definitely worth a look.